Even though MMA is competition in a controlled environment, it is close enough to a real fight where it still makes a great test bed. Let me ask you this, would you really honestly believe that an MMA fighter would be unable to defend himself out on the streets?

Controlled? Certainly. All training, scenario based or not, must be controlled to avoid injury to the practitioners. Otherwise we are fighting for real, not training.

There is nothing saying you can't add multiple opponents or weapons, surprise attacks, etc, to MMA style training. Another question may be, "What is better than MMA training for testing your system?"

I haven't seen anything better. But I am interested to hear other ideas.

We weren't talking about training in this instance. We were talking about competitions. By controlled, I meant there are rules. In SD _training_ or _testing_ of the system's effectiveness, there shouldn't be rules other than don't injure your partner.

Theres no way to really test your system thats legal. And really just because everybody in your class got into a real fight and kicked butt don't mean you will.

The only thing you can do as mentioned is do reality based training, scenarios, multiples and range work. Train in street clothes with the shoes you usually wear. Be able to modify your methods in order to survive. And have a planned escape route.

Like I mentioned you can be the best tourney fighter and do great in class, but when you are faced with someone viciously saying and wanting to hurt you. You don't know, some people mentally freeze other people trainng kicking in. Mentally you have to forced yourself in survival mode, its strongest primal urge we have, the will to survive, let it out.

If you're concerned how effective your own art is and your proficiency in it, address your classes and your fear of fighting. Some people would advocate competition (and then you naturally open up the realism / rules / sparring / UFC debate that seemingly rages on most threads. Others I know attcaked their questions head-on and applied for Door work. Starting at Universities and working their way up to bars, clubs and so on.

If you spend an unhealthy amount of time wondering about the real effectiveness of your art, then choose one of the two, I reckon. Or just stop worrying and concentrate on training and hope you never have to use it for real.

Not really. The rules in place in MMA are there specifically to prevent injury as well as possible.

What I mean as far as SD testing is that techniques should not be limited. That said, we have to know that you can't really knife hand someone in the throat or gouge out their eyes. You can go full force on other techniques and then "pull" on the ones that are really dangerous. It ain't perfect for sure.